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Walter Murch (born July 12 , 1943 ) is an Academy Award winning Film Editor / Sound Mixer . He attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, where he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins and Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel , with whom they staged Happenings . Murch and Robbins graduated a year ahead of Deschanel and attended the University Of Southern California film school, successfully encouraging Deschanel to follow them. Murch started editing and mixing Sound with Francis Ford Coppola 's ''The Rain People'' (1969). Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's '' THX-1138 '', '' American Graffiti '' and Coppola's '' The Godfather '' before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's '' The Conversation ,'' for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's '' The Godfather Part II '' which was released in 1974, the same year as ''The Conversation''. In 1979 , he won an Oscar for the sound mix of '' Apocalypse Now '' as well as a nomination for picture editing. While working on the film, Walter coined the term Sound Designer , and along with colleagues originated the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. In 1996 , Murch won two more Oscars for his sound mixing and picture editing of Anthony Minghella's '' The English Patient ''. Murch's Oscar for picture editing was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film (using the Avid system). He has directed one film, '' Return To Oz ''. In 2003 , Murch edited another Anthony Minghella film, '' Cold Mountain '' on Apple's sub-$1000 Final Cut Pro software using off the shelf Power Mac G4 computers. This was a leap for such a big-budget film, where expensive Avid systems were usually the standard Non-linear Editing System . He received an Academy Award nomination for this work and his efforts on the film were documented in Charles Koppelman's 2004 book ''Behind the Seen''. Unlike most film editors today, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to "brain surgery and short-order cooking", since both cooks and surgeons stand when they work. In 1976 he invented a film splicer which conceals the evidence of the splice by using extremely narrow but strongly adhesive strips of special polyester-silicone tape. He is perhaps the only film editor in history to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:
He has written one book on film editing, ''In the Blink of an Eye'' ( 2001 ), was the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book ''The Conversations'' ( 2002 ), as well as Charles Koppelman's book ''Behind the Seen'' ( 2004 ). EXTERNAL LINKS
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